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Summary for Policymakers
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About NIPCC and Its Previous Reports
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, or NIPCC, as its name
suggests, is an international panel of scientists and scholars who came together to
understand the causes and consequences of climate change. NIPCC has no formal
attachment to or sponsorship from any government or governmental agency. It is wholly
independent of political pressures and influences and therefore is not predisposed to
produce politically motivated conclusions or policy recommendations.
NIPCC seeks to objectively analyze and interpret data and facts without conforming to any
specific agenda. This organizational structure and purpose stand in contrast to those of the
United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is
government-sponsored, politically motivated, and predisposed to believing that climate
change is a problem in need of a U.N. solution.
NIPCC traces its beginnings to an informal meeting held in Milan, Italy in 2003 organized
by Dr. S. Fred Singer and the Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). The
purpose was to produce an independent evaluation of the available scientific evidence on
the subject of carbon dioxide-induced global warming in anticipation of the release of the
IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). NIPCC scientists concluded the IPCC was
biased with respect to making future projections of climate change, discerning a significant
human-induced influence on current and past climatic trends, and evaluating the impacts of
potential carbon dioxide-induced environmental changes on Earth’s biosphere.
To highlight such deficiencies in the IPCC’s AR4, in 2008 SEPP partnered with The
Heartland Institute to produce Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate, a summary
of research for policymakers that has been widely distributed and translated into six
languages. In 2009, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change joined
the original two sponsors to help produce Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report
of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), the first
comprehensive alternative to the alarmist reports of the IPCC.
In 2010, a Web site (www.nipccreport.org) was created to highlight scientific studies
NIPCC scientists believed would likely be downplayed or ignored by the IPCC during
preparation of its next assessment report. In 2011, the three sponsoring organizations
produced Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2011 Interim Report of the Nongovernmental
International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), a review and analysis of new research
released since the 2009 report or overlooked by the authors of that report.
In 2013, the Information Center for Global Change Studies, a division of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences, translated and published an abridged edition of the 2009 and 2011
NIPCC reports in a single volume. On June 15, the Chinese Academy of Sciences
organized a NIPCC Workshop in Beijing to allow the NIPCC principal authors to present
summaries of their conclusions.
In September 2013, NIPCC released Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science,
the first of two volumes bringing the original 2009 report up-to-date with research from the
2011 Interim Report plus research as current as the third quarter of 2013. A new Web site
was created (www.ClimateChangeReconsidered.org) to feature the new report and news
about its release. A second volume, Climate Change Reconsidered II : Impacts,
Adaptation, and Vulnerability, is planned for release in 2014.
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science
2013 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)
Summary for Policymakers
Lead Authors/Editors:
Craig D. Idso (USA), Robert M. Carter (Australia), S. Fred Singer (USA)
Chapter Lead Authors:
Timothy Ball (Canada), Robert M. Carter (Australia), Don Easterbrook (USA), Craig D. Idso (USA), Sherwood Idso (USA),
Madhav Khandekar (Canada), William Kininmonth (Australia), Willem de Lange (New Zealand), Sebastian Lüning
(Germany), Anthony Lupo (USA), Cliff Ollier (Australia), Willie Soon (USA)
Contributing Authors:
J. Scott Armstrong (USA), Joseph D’Aleo (USA), Don Easterbrook (USA), Kesten Green (Australia), Ross McKitrick
(Canada), Cliff Ollier (Australia), Tom Segalstad (Norway), S. Fred Singer (USA), Roy Spencer (USA)
Chapter Reviewers:
Habibullo Abdussamatov (Russia), Joe Bastardi (USA), Franco Battaglia (Italy), David Bowen (UK), Roy Clark (USA),
Vincent Courtillot (France), Christopher Essex (Canada), David Evans (Australia), Sören Floderus (Denmark), Stewart
Franks (Australia), Eigil Friis-Christensen (Denmark), Fred Goldberg (Sweden), Larry Gould (USA), William Gray (USA),
Vincent Richard Gray (New Zealand), Howard Hayden (USA), Martin Hovland (Norway), Olavi Kärner (Estonia), James
O’Brien (USA), Garth Paltridge (Australia), Donald Rapp (USA), Carl Ribbing (Sweden), Nicola Scafetta (USA), John
Shade (UK), Gary Sharp (USA), Jan-Erik Solheim (Norway), Antón Uriarte Cantolla (Spain), Gerd Weber (Germany)
Editors:
S.T. Karnick (USA), Diane Carol Bast (USA)
Published for the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science Introduction
Many scientists, policymakers, and engaged citizens have
become concerned over the possibility that man-made
greenhouse gas emissions, in particular carbon dioxide
(CO2), may be causing dangerous climate change. A
primary reason for this public alarm is a series of reports
issued by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC claims to know,
apparently with rising certainty over time, that “most of
the observed increase in global average temperatures
since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the
observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas
concentrations” (IPCC AR4 SPM, p. 10). This Summary
for Policymakers summarizes and interprets a major
scientific report that refutes this claim.
The Red Team Reports
A technique frequently used in industry, government, and
law when dealing with complex or controversial matters
is to deploy competing Green and Red Teams to pursue
alternative approaches (e.g., Sandoz, 2001; Nemeth et al.,
2001). A Red Team provides a kind of “defense counsel”
to verify and counter arguments mounted by the initial
Green Team (the “prosecution”) as well as discover and
present alternatives the Green Team may have
overlooked.
For many years, one team has dominated the global
debate over climate change, the Green Team of the United
Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC). In 2003, however, at a meeting in Milan, a Red
Team started to emerge composed of independent
scientists drawn from universities and private institutions
around the world. Since 2008 that team, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),
has been independently evaluating the impacts of rising
atmospheric concentrations of CO2 on Earth’s biosphere
and evaluating forecasts of future climate effects (Singer,
2008; Idso and Singer, 2009; Idso, Carter, and Singer,
2011).
CCR-II: Physical Science
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science is
NIPCC’s latest official report. Lead authors Craig D.
Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer have worked
with a team of some 50 scientists to produce a 1,200-page
report that is comprehensive, objective, and faithful to the
scientific method. It is the first of two volumes that
together mirror and rebut the IPCC’s Working Group 1
2 Table of Contents
Introduction
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Methodology
Global Climate Models
Postulates
Circumstantial Evidence
Policy Recommendations
Conclusion
Figures
1. Summary of NIPCC’s Findings
2. IPCC’s Three Lines of Argument
3. Key Facts about Temperature Forcings and
Feedbacks
4. Lack of Evidence for Rising Temperatures
5. Key Facts about Global Climate Models
6. Key Facts about Surface Temperature
7. Key Facts about Solar Forcing
8. Key Facts about the Cryosphere
9. Key Facts about the Hydrosphere
10. Key Facts about Extreme Weather Events
References
Authors, Contributors, and Reviewers
and Working Group 2 reports, the latter last published in
2007 (Fourth Assessment Report, or AR4) and expected
to be updated and released in 2013 and 2014 (Fifth
Assessment Report, or AR5). The second volume of CCRII will address impacts, adaptation, and vulnerabilities.
Like the IPCC’s reports, NIPCC’s reports cite
thousands of articles appearing in peer-reviewed science
journals relevant to the subject of human-induced climate
change. For CCR-II: Physical Science, NIPCC presents
its findings in seven chapters:
Global Climate Models
Forcings and Feedbacks
Solar Forcing of Climate
Observations: Temperature Records
Observations: The Cryosphere
Observations: The Hydrosphere and Oceans
Observations: Extreme Weather
In keeping with its Red Team mission, NIPCC
authors paid special attention to contributions that were
either overlooked by the IPCC or that contain data,
Summary for Policymakers discussion, or implications arguing against the IPCC’s
claim that dangerous global warming is resulting, or will
result, from human-related greenhouse gas emissions.
Figure 1 on the following page summarizes NIPCC’s
principal findings. Most notably, its authors say the IPCC
has exaggerated the amount of warming likely to occur if
the concentration of atmospheric CO2 were to double, and
such warming as occurs is likely to be modest and cause
no net harm to the global environment or to human wellbeing.
This Summary for Policymakers was written in
collaboration with the lead authors and approved by them.
It reproduces in a series of figures the executive summary
of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science,
which appears at the beginning of that book. Because it is
aimed at a larger and more popular audience than the
book itself, this summary adds a discussion of the
scientific method and the precautionary principle, a brief
summary and critical analysis of each of the IPCC’s main
lines of argument, and a brief set of recommendations for
policymakers.
1. Methodology
The IPCC relies on three lines of reasoning: computer
models that it asserts show CO2 to be responsible for most
of the global warming in the twentieth century, a series of
postulates that make a plausible case for its hypothesis,
and circumstantial evidence that would be consistent with
its hypothesis were it true. These IPCC arguments are
summarized in Figure 2.
The Scientific Method
Although the IPCC’s reports are voluminous and their
arguments impressively persistent, it is legitimate to ask
whether that makes them good science. In order to
conduct an investigation, scientists must first formulate a
falsifiable hypothesis to test. The hypothesis implicit in
all IPCC writings, though rarely explicitly stated, is that
dangerous global warming is resulting, or will result,
from human-related greenhouse gas emissions.
In considering any such hypothesis, an alternative and
null hypothesis must be entertained, which is the simplest
hypothesis consistent with the known facts. Regarding
global warming, the null hypothesis is that currently
observed changes in global climate indices and the
physical environment, as well as current changes in
animal and plant characteristics, are the result of natural
variability. To invalidate this null hypothesis requires, at a
minimum, direct evidence of human causation of
specified changes that lie outside usual, natural
variability. Unless and until such evidence is adduced, the
null hypothesis is assumed to be correct.
In contradiction of the scientific method, the IPCC
assumes its implicit hypothesis is correct and that its only
duty is to collect evidence and make plausible arguments
in the hypothesis’s favor. One probable reason for this
behavior is that the United Nations protocol under which
the IPCC operates defines climate change as “a change of
climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human
activity that alters the composition of the global
atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate
variability observed over comparable time periods”
(United Nations, 1994, Article 1.2). Not surprisingly,
directing attention to only the effects of human
greenhouse gas emissions has resulted in the IPCC failing
to provide a thorough analysis of climate change in the
round.
All three of the IPCC’s lines of reasoning,
summarized in Figure 2, depart from proper scientific
methodology. Global climate models produce meaningful
results only if we assume we already know perfectly how
the global climate works, and most climate scientists say
we do not (Bray and von Storch, 2010). Moreover, it is
widely recognized that climate models are not designed to
produce predictions of future climate but rather what-if
projections of many alternative possible futures
(Trenberth, 2009). Postulates, commonly defined as
“something suggested or assumed as true as the basis for
reasoning, discussion, or belief,” can stimulate relevant
observations or experiments but more often are merely
assertions that are difficult or impossible to test
(Kahneman, 2011). Observations in science are useful
primarily to falsify hypotheses and cannot prove one is
correct (Popper, 1965, p. vii).
The Precautionary Principle
Facing such criticism of its methodology and a lack of
compelling evidence of dangerous warming, the IPCC’s
defenders often invoke the precautionary principle. The
principle states: “Where there are threats of serious or
irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall
not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective
measures to prevent environmental degradation” (United
Nations, 1992, Principle 15). This is a sociological
precept rather than a scientific one and lacks the
intellectual rigor necessary for use in policy formulation
(Goklany, 2001).
3
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science FIGURE 1
Summary of NIPCC’s Findings • Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is a mild greenhouse gas that exerts a diminishing warming
effect as its concentration increases.
• Doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 from its pre-industrial level, in the absence of
other forcings and feedbacks, would likely cause a warming of ~0.3 to 1.1°C, almost 50% of
which must already have occurred.
• A few tenths of a degree of additional warming, should it occur, would not represent a climate
crisis.
• Model outputs published in successive IPCC reports since 1990 project a doubling of CO2 could
cause warming of up to 6°C by 2100. Instead, global warming ceased around the end of the
twentieth century and was followed (since 1997) by 16 years of stable temperature.
• Over recent geological time, Earth’s temperature has fluctuated naturally between about +4°C
and -6°C with respect to twentieth century temperature. A warming of 2°C above today, should it
occur, falls within the bounds of natural variability.
• Though a future warming of 2°C would cause geographically varied ecological responses, no
evidence exists that those changes would be net harmful to the global environment or to human
well-being.
• At the current level of ~400 ppm we still live in a CO2-starved world. Atmospheric levels 15 times
greater existed during the Cambrian Period (about 550 million years ago) without known adverse
effects.
• The overall warming since about 1860 corresponds to a recovery from the Little Ice Age
modulated by natural multidecadal cycles driven by ocean-atmosphere oscillations, or by solar
variations at the de Vries (~208 year) and Gleissberg (~80 year) and shorter periodicities.
• Earth has not warmed significantly for the past 16 years despite an 8% increase in atmospheric
CO2, which represents 34% of all extra CO2 added to the atmosphere since the start of the
industrial revolution.
• CO2 is a vital nutrient used by plants in photosynthesis. Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere
“greens” the planet and helps feed the growing human population.
• No close correlation exists between temperature variation over the past 150 years and humanrelated CO2 emissions. The parallelism of temperature and CO2 increase between about 1980
and 2000 AD could be due to chance and does not necessarily indicate causation.
• The causes of historic global warming remain uncertain, but significant correlations exist between
climate patterning and multidecadal variation and solar activity over the past few hundred years.
• Forward projections of solar cyclicity imply the next few decades may be marked by global
cooling rather than warming, despite continuing CO2 emissions.
Source: “Executive Summary,” Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (Chicago, IL: The
Heartland Institute, 2013).
4 Summary for Policymakers FIGURE 2
IPCC’s Three Lines of Argument
GLOBAL CLIMATE MODEL PROJECTIONS
IPCC modelers assume Global Climate Models (GCMs) are based
on a perfect knowledge of all climate forcings and feedbacks. They then assert:
• A doubling of atmospheric CO2 would cause warming of up to 6°C.
• Human-related CO2 emissions caused an atmospheric warming of at least 0.3°C over the
past 15 years.
• Enhanced warming (a “hot spot”) should exist in the upper troposphere in tropical regions.
• Both poles should have warmed faster than the rest of Earth during the late twentieth
century.
POSTULATES
Postulates are statements that assume the truth of an underlying fact that has
not been independently confirmed or proven. The IPCC postulates:
• The warming of the twentieth century cannot be explained by natural variability.
• The late twentieth century warm peak was of greater magnitude than previous natural
peaks.
• Increases in atmospheric CO2 precede, and then force, parallel increases in temperature.
• Solar forcings are too small to explain twentieth century warming.
• A future warming of 2°C or more would be net harmful to the biosphere and human wellbeing.
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
Circumstantial evidence does not bear directly on the matter in dispute but refers to
circumstances from which the occurrence of the fact might be inferred. The IPCC cites the
following circumstantial evidence it says is consistent with its hypothesis:
• Unusual melting is occurring in mountain glaciers, Arctic sea ice, and polar icecaps.
• Global sea level is rising at an enhanced rate and swamping tropical coral atolls.
• Droughts, floods, and monsoon variability and intensity are increasing.
• Global warming is leading to more, or more intense, wildfires, rainfall, storms, hurricanes,
and other extreme weather events.
• Unusual melting of Boreal permafrost or sub-seabed gas hydrates is causing warming due
to methane release.
5
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science The hypothesis of human-caused global warming
comes up short not merely of “full scientific certainty”
but of reasonable certainty or even plausibility. The
weight of evidence now leans heavily against the theory.
Invoking the precautionary principle does not lower the
required threshold for evidence to be regarded as valid
nor does it answer the most important questions about the
causes and consequences of climate change. Scientific
principles acknowledge the supremacy of experiment and
observation and do not bow to instinctive feelings of
alarm nor claims of a supposed scientific “consensus”
(Legates et al., 2013). The formulation of effective public
environmental policy must be rooted in evidence-based
science, not an over-abundance of precaution (More and
Vita-More, 2013; U.K. House of Commons Science and
Technology Committee, 2006).
Contradictions about methodology and the verity of
claimed facts make it difficult for unprejudiced lay
persons to judge for themselves where the truth actually
lies in the global warming debate. This is one of the
primary reasons why politicians and commentators rely so
heavily on supposedly authoritative statements issued by
one side or another in the public discussion. Arguing from
authority, however, is the antithesis of the scientific
method. Attempting to stifle debate by appealing to
authority hinders rather than helps scientific progress and
understanding.
2. Global Climate Models
In contrast to the scientific method briefly described in
Section 1, computer models (called Global Climate
Models or GCMs) represent speculative thought
experiments by modellers who often lack a detailed
understanding of underlying processes. The results of
GCMs are only as reliable as the data and theories “fed”
into them, which scientists widely recognize as being
seriously deficient. If natural climate forcings and
feedback are not perfectly understood, then GCMs
become little more than an exercise in curve-fitting, or
changing parameters until the outcomes match the
modeller’s expectations. As John von Neumann is
reported to have once said, “with four parameters I can fit
an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his
trunk” (Dyson, 2004).
The science literature is replete with admissions by
leading climate modellers that forcings and feedback are
not sufficiently well understood, that data are insufficient
or too unreliable, and that computer power is insufficient
to resolve important climate processes. Many important
elements of the climate system cannot be properly
6 simulated by the current generation of models, including
atmospheric pressure, wind, clouds, temperature,
precipitation, ocean currents, sea ice, and permafrost.
The major known deficiencies include model
calibration, non-linear model behavior, and the omission
of important natural climate-related variability. Model
calibration is faulty as it assumes all temperature rise
since the start of the industrial revolution has resulted
from human CO2 emissions. In reality, major humanrelated emissions commenced only in the mid-twentieth
century. Non-linear climate models exhibit chaotic
behavior. As a result, individual simulations (“runs”) may
show differing trend values (Singer, 2013b). Internal
climate oscillations (AMO, PDO, etc.) are major features
of the historic temperature record, yet GCM models do
not even attempt to simulate them. Similarly, the models
fail to incorporate the effects of variations in solar
magnetic field or in the flux of cosmic rays, both
phenomena known to significantly affect climate.
In general, GCMs perform poorly when their
projections are assessed against empirical data.
Specifically, the following forecasts made by GCMs have
been falsified by real-world data:
• IPCC Claim #1: A doubling of atmospheric CO2
would cause warming between 3°C and 6°C. The increase
in radiative forcing produced by a doubling of
atmospheric CO2 is generally agreed to be 3.7 Watts/m2.
Equating this forcing to temperature requires taking
account of both positive and negative feedbacks. IPCC
models incorporate a strong positive feedback from
increasing water vapor but exclude negative feedbacks
such as a concomitant increase in low-level clouds –
hence they project a warming effect of 3°C or more.
The IPCC ignores mounting evidence that climate
sensitivity to CO2 is much lower than its models assume.
Empirical tests of climate sensitivity to increasing
atmospheric CO2 indicate negative feedbacks predominate
and associated warming is likely an order of magnitude
less than the IPCC projects (Spencer and Braswell, 2008;
Lindzen and Choi, 2011). Atmospheric methane (CH4)
levels are rising more slowly than predicted and nitrous
oxide (N2O) emissions are expected to fall as CO2
concentrations and temperatures rise, a negative climate
feedback not taken into account by the IPCC.
Other forcings and feedbacks the IPCC has failed to
take into account include increases in low-level clouds in
response to enhanced atmospheric water vapor, ocean
emissions of dimethyl sulfide (DMS), and the presence
and total cooling effect of both natural and industrial
aerosols. These natural processes are likely to offset most
Summary for Policymakers or even all of any warming caused by rising CO2
concentrations. Figure 3 summarizes these and other
findings about forcings and feedbacks appearing in
Chapter 2 of CCR-II: Physical Science.
• IPCC Claim #2: CO2 caused an atmospheric
warming of at least 0.3°C over the past 15 years. The
IPCC’s authors compare the output of unforced (and
incomplete) models with a dataset that represents
twentieth century global temperature (HadCRUT, British
Meteorological Office). Finding a greater warming trend
in the dataset than in model projections, the false conclusion is then drawn that this “excess” warming must be
caused by human-related greenhouse forcing. In reality,
no excess warming has been demonstrated, first because
this line of argument assumes models have perfect
knowledge, information, and power, which they do not.
And second, because a wide variety of datasets other than
the HadCRUT global air temperature curve favored by the
IPCC do not exhibit a warming trend during the second
half of the twentieth century. See Figure 4.
• IPCC Claim #3: A thermal hot spot should exist in the
upper troposphere in tropical regions. Observations from
both weather balloon radiosondes and satellite MSU
sensors show the opposite, with either flat or decreasing
warming trends with increasing height in the troposphere
(Douglass et al., 2007; Singer, 2011; Singer, 2013a).
• IPCC Claim #4: Both polar regions should have
warmed faster than the rest of Earth during the late
twentieth century. Late-twentieth century warming
occurred in many Arctic locations and also over a limited
area of the West Antarctic Peninsula, but the large polar
East Antarctic Ice Sheet has been cooling since at least
the 1950s (O’Donnell et al., 2010).
More facts about climate models and their limitations
reported in Chapter 1 of CCR-II: Physical Science are
reported in Figure 5.
We conclude the current generation of GCMs
are unable to make accurate projections of
climate even 10 years ahead, let alone the 100year period that has been adopted by policy
planners. The output of such models should
therefore not be used to guide public policy
formulation until they have been validated and
shown to have predictive value.
FIGURE 3
Key Facts about Temperature
Forcings and Feedbacks
• A doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels (from
280 to 560 ppm) would likely produce a temperature
forcing of 3.7 W/m2 in the lower atmosphere, for
about ~1°C of prima facie warming.
• IPCC models stress the importance of positive
feedback from increasing water vapor and thereby
project warming of ~3-6°C, whereas empirical data
indicate an order of magnitude less warming of
~0.3-1.0°C.
• In ice core samples, changes in temperature
precede parallel changes in atmospheric CO2 by
several hundred years; also, temperature and CO2
are uncoupled through lengthy portions of the
historical and geological records; therefore CO2
cannot be the primary forcing agent for most
temperature changes.
• Atmospheric methane (CH4) levels for the past two
decades fall well below the values projected by the
IPCC in its Assessment Reports. The IPCC’s
temperature projections incorporate these inflated
CH4 estimates and need downward revision
accordingly.
• The melting of permafrost or submarine gas
hydrates is not likely to emit dangerous amounts of
methane at current rates of warming.
• Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions are expected to fall
as CO2 concentrations and temperatures rise,
indicating it acts as a negative climate feedback.
• Other negative feedbacks on climate sensitivity that
are either discounted or underestimated by the
IPCC include increases in low-level clouds in
response to enhanced atmospheric water vapor,
increases in ocean emissions of dimethyl sulfide
(DMS), and the presence and total cooling effect of
both natural and industrial aerosols.
Source: “Chapter 2. Forcings and Feedbacks,” Climate
Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (Chicago,
IL: The Heartland Institute, 2013).
7
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science FIGURE 4
Lack of Evidence for Rising Temperatures
The difference in surface temperatures between 1942–1995 and 1979–97, as registered by
datasets that represent land, oceanic, and atmospheric locations.
LAND SURFACE
OCEAN
ATMOSPHERE
PROXIES
Global (IPCC, HadCRUT)
United States (GISS)
Sea surface temperature (SST)1
SST Hadley NMAT
Satellite MSU (1979–1997)
Hadley radiosondes (1979–97)
Mostly land surface temperature2
+0.5° C
~zero
~zero
~zero
~zero
~zero
~zero
Unless otherwise indicated, data is drawn from the nominated government agencies.
Gouretski et al., GRL, 2012; 2Anderson et al., GRL, 2013. 1
3. Postulates
Figure 2 identifies five postulates at the base of the
IPCC’s claim that global warming is resulting, or will
result, from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. All
five are readily refuted by real-world observations.
• IPCC Postulate #1: The warming of the twentieth
century cannot be explained by natural variability.
Temperature records contain natural climate rhythms that
are not well summarized or defined by fitting straight
lines through arbitrary portions of a fundamentally
rhythmic, non-stationary data plot. In particular, linear
fitting fails to take account of meteorologicaloceanographical-solar variations that are well established
to occur at multidecadal and millennial time scales. Even
assuming, wrongly, that global temperatures would have
been unchanging in the absence of man-made greenhouse
gas emissions, the correctness of IPCC’s assertion
depends upon the period of time considered (Davis and
Bohling, 2001). For example, temperatures have been
cooling since 8,000 and 2,000 years ago; warming since
20,000 years ago, and also since 1850 and since 1979; and
static (no net warming or cooling) between 700 and 150
AD and since 1997 AD.
Global warming during the twentieth century
occurred in two pulses, between 1910–1940 and 1975–
2000, at gentle rates of a little over 1.5°C/century (British
Meteorological Office, 2013). In contrast, natural
warming at some individual meteorological stations
8 during the 1920s proceeded at high rates of up to
4°C/decade or more (Chylek et al., 2004). The first period
(1910–1940) represents rates of global warming that are
fully natural (having occurred prior to the major build-up
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere), whereas
measurements made during the late twentieth century
warming are likely exaggerated by inadequate correction
for the urban heat island effect.
Comparison of modern and ancient rates of natural
temperature change is difficult because of the lack of
direct measurements available prior to 1850. However,
high-quality proxy temperature records from the
Greenland ice core for the past 10,000 years demonstrate
a natural range of warming and cooling rates between
+2.5 and -2.5 °C/century (Alley, 2000; Carter, 2010, Fig.
7), significantly greater than rates measured for Greenland
or the globe during the twentieth century.
• IPCC Postulate #2: The late twentieth century warm
peak was of greater magnitude than previous natural
peaks. The glaciological and recent geological records
contain numerous examples of ancient temperatures up to
3°C or more warmer than the peak reported at the end of
the twentieth century. During the Holocene, such warmer
peaks included the Egyptian, Minoan, Roman, and
Medieval warm periods (Alley, 2000). During the
Pleistocene, warmer peaks were associated with
interglacial oxygen isotope stages 5, 9, 11, and 31
(Lisiecki and Raymo, 2005). During the Late Miocene
Summary for Policymakers FIGURE 5
Key Facts about Global Climate Models
• Climate models project an atmospheric warming of at least 0.3°C over the past 15 years; in fact,
temperature stasis or slight cooling has occurred.
• Climate models project an ocean warming of at least 0.2°C since 2000; in fact, no warming is observed.
• Climate models project the appearance of an upper troposphere hot-spot in tropical regions; none is
observed.
• Climate models project late twentieth century warming should have occurred towards both poles; in fact,
warming was confined to north polar regions.
• Climate models generally assume a climate sensitivity of 3°C for a doubling of CO2 above preindustrial
values, whereas meteorological observations are consistent with a sensitivity of 1°C or less.
• Climate models underestimate surface evaporation caused by increased temperature by a factor of 3,
resulting in a consequential underestimation of global precipitation.
• Climate models represent aerosol-induced changes in infrared (IR) radiation inadequately, despite
studies showing different mineral aerosols (for equal loadings) can cause differences in surface IR flux
between 7 and 25 Wm2.
• Deterministic climate models have inherent properties that make dynamic predictability impossible;
introduction of techniques to deal with this (notably parameterization) introduces bias into model
projections.
• Limitations in computing power restrict climate models from resolving important climate processes; lowresolution models fail to capture many important regional and lesser-scale phenomena such as clouds.
• Model calibration is faulty, as it assumes all temperature rise since the start of the industrial revolution
has resulted from human CO2 emissions; in reality, major human-related emissions commenced only in
the mid-twentieth century.
• Non-linear climate models exhibit chaotic behavior. As a result, individual simulations (“runs”) may show
differing trend values.
• Internal climate oscillations (AMO, PDO, etc.) are major features of the historic temperature record;
climate models do not even attempt to simulate them.
• Similarly, climate models fail to incorporate the effects of variations in solar magnetic field or in the flux of
cosmic rays, both of which are known to significantly affect climate.
Source: “Chapter 1. Global Climate Models and Their Limitations,” Climate Change Reconsidered II:
Physical Science (Chicago, IL: The Heartland Institute, 2013).
and Early Pliocene (6–3 million years ago) temperature
consistently attained values 2–3°C above twentieth
century values (Zachos et al., 2001).
Figure 6 summarizes these and other findings about
surface temperatures that appear in Chapter 4 of CCR-II:
Physical Science.
• IPCC Postulate #3: Increases in atmospheric CO2
precede, and then force, parallel increases in
temperature. The remarkable (and at first blush,
synchronous) parallelism that exists between rhythmic
fluctuations in ancient atmospheric temperature and
atmospheric CO2 levels was first detected in polar ice core
samples analyzed during the 1970s. From the early 1990s
9
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science FIGURE 6
Key Facts about Surface Temperature
• Whether today’s global surface temperature is seen
to be part of a warming trend depends upon the
time period considered.
• Over (climatic) time scales of many thousand years,
temperature is cooling; over the historical
(meteorological) time scale of the past century
temperature has warmed. Over the past 16 years,
there has been no net warming despite an increase
in atmospheric CO2 of 8% – which represents 34%
of all human-related CO2 emissions released to the
atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
• Given an atmospheric mixing time of ~1 year, the
facts just related represent a test of the dangerous
warming hypothesis, which test it fails.
• Based upon the HadCRUT dataset favored by the
IPCC, two phases of warming occurred during the
twentieth century, between 1910–1940 and 1979–
2000, at similar rates of a little over 1.5°C/century.
The early twentieth century warming preceded
major industrial carbon dioxide emissions, and must
be natural; warming during the second (prima facie,
similar) period might incorporate a small humanrelated carbon dioxide effect, but warming might
also be inflated by urban heat island effects.
• Other temperature datasets fail to record the late
twentieth century warming seen in the HadCRUT
dataset (Figure 3).
• There was nothing unusual about either the
magnitude or rate of the late twentieth century
warming pulses represented on the HadCRUT
record, both falling well within the envelope of
known, previous natural variations.
• No empirical evidence exists to support the
assertion that a planetary warming of 2°C would be
net ecologically or economically damaging.
Source: “Chapter 4. Observations: Temperatures,”
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science
(Chicago, IL: The Heartland Institute, 2013).
onward, however, higher-resolution sampling has
repeatedly shown these historic temperature changes
precede the parallel changes in CO2 by several hundred
years or more (Mudelsee, 2001). A similar relationship of
temperature change leading CO2 change (in this case by
10 several months) also characterizes the much shorter
seasonal cyclicity manifest in Hawaiian and other
meteorological measurements (Kuo et al., 1990). In such
circumstances, changing levels of CO2 cannot be driving
changes in temperature, but must either be themselves
stimulated by temperature change, or be co-varying with
temperature in response to changes in another (at this
stage unknown) variable.
• IPCC Postulate #4: Solar forcings are too small to
explain twentieth century warming. IPCC authors have
concluded solar forcing alone is inadequate to account for
twentieth century warming, inferring CO2 must be
responsible for the remainder. Nonetheless, observations
indicate variations occur in total ocean–atmospheric
meridional heat transport and that these variations are
driven by changes in solar radiation rooted in the intrinsic
variability of the Sun’s magnetic activity (Soon and
Legates, 2013).
Incoming solar radiation is most often expressed as
Total Solar Insolation (TSI), a measure derived from
multi-proxy measures of solar activity (Hoyt and
Schatten, 1993; extended and re-scaled by Willson, 2011;
Scafetta and Willson, 2013). The newest estimates, from
satellite-borne ACRIM-3 measurements, indicate TSI
ranged between 1360 and 1363 Wm2 between 1979 and
2011, the variability of ~3 Wm2 occurring in parallel with
the 11-year sunspot cycle. Larger changes in TSI are also
known to occur in parallel with climatic change over
longer time scales. For instance, Shapiro et al. (2011)
estimated the TSI change between the Maunder Minimum
and current conditions may have been as large as 6 Wm2.
Temperature records from circum-Arctic regions of
the Northern Hemisphere show a close correlation with
TSI over the past 150 years, with both measures
conforming to the ~60–70 year multidecadal cycle (1890–
1960). In contrast, the measured steady rise of
CO2 emissions over the same period shows little
correlation with the strong multidecadal (and shorter) ups
and downs of surface temperature around the world.
Finally, the IPCC ignores x-ray, ultraviolet, and
magnetic flux variation, the latter having particularly
important implications for the modulation of galactic
cosmic ray influx and low cloud formation (Svensmark,
1988; Kirkby, et al., 2011). Figure 7 summarizes these
and other findings about solar forcings from Chapter 3
of CCR-II: Physical Science.
• IPCC Postulate #5: Warming of 2°C above today’s
temperature would be harmful. The suggestion that 2°C
Summary for Policymakers FIGURE 7
Key Facts about Solar Forcing
• Evidence is accruing that changes in Earth’s surface
temperature are largely driven by variations in solar
activity. Examples of solar-controlled climate
change epochs include the Medieval Warm Period,
Little Ice Age and Early Twentieth Century (1910–
1940) Warm Period.
• The Sun may have contributed as much as 66% of
the observed twentieth century warming, and
perhaps more.
• Strong empirical correlations have been reported
from all around the world between solar variability
and climate indices including temperature,
precipitation, droughts, floods, streamflow, and
monsoons.
• IPCC models do not incorporate important solar
factors such as fluctuations in magnetic intensity
and overestimate the role of human-related CO2
forcing.
• The IPCC fails to consider the importance of the
demonstrated empirical relationship between solar
activity, the ingress of galactic cosmic rays, and the
formation of low clouds.
• The respective importance of the Sun and CO2 in
forcing Earth climate remains unresolved; current
climate models fail to account for a plethora of
known Sun-climate connections.
• The recently quiet Sun and extrapolation of solar
cycle patterns into the future suggest a planetary
cooling may occur over the next few decades.
Source: “Chapter 3. Solar Forcing of Climate,” Climate
Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (Chicago,
IL: The Heartland Institute, 2013).
of warming would be harmful was coined at a conference
organized by the British Meteorological Office in 2005
(DEFRA, 2005). The particular value of 2°C is entirely
arbitrary and was proposed by the Word Wildlife Fund as
a political expediency rather than as an informed
scientific opinion. The target was set in response to
concern that politicians would not initiate policy actions
to reduce CO2 emissions unless they were given
quantitative temperature targets to aim for.
Multiple lines of evidence suggest a 2°C rise in
temperature would not be harmful to the biosphere. The
period termed the Holocene Climatic Optimum (c. 8,000
ybp) was 2–3°C warmer than today (Alley, 2000), and the
planet attained similar temperatures for several million
years during the Miocene and Pliocene (Zachos et al.,
2001). Biodiversity is encouraged by warmer rather than
colder temperatures (Idso and Idso, 2009), and higher
temperatures and elevated CO2 greatly stimulate the
growth of most plants (Idso and Idso, 2011).
Despite its widespread adoption by environmental
NGOs, lobbyists, and governments, no empirical evidence
exists to substantiate the claim that 2°C of warming
presents a threat to planetary ecologies or environments.
Nor can any convincing case be made that a warming will
be more economically costly than an equivalent cooling
(either of which could occur unheralded for entirely
natural reasons), since any planetary change of 2°C
magnitude in temperature would result in complex local
and regional changes, some being of economic or
environmental benefit and others being harmful.
We conclude neither the rate nor the
magnitude of the reported late twentieth
century surface warming (1979–2000) lay
outside normal natural variability, nor was it in
any way unusual compared to earlier
episodes
in
Earth’s
climatic
history.
Furthermore, solar forcings of temperature
change are likely more important than is
currently recognized, and evidence is lacking
that a 2° C increase in temperature (of
whatever cause) would be globally harmful.
4. Circumstantial Evidence
As its third line of reasoning, the IPCC presents
circumstantial evidence regarding natural phenomena
known to vary with temperature. The examples the IPCC
chooses to report invariably point to a negative impact on
plant and animal life and human well-being. When claims
are made that such phenomena are the result of
anthropogenic global warming, almost invariably at least
one of the following three requirements of scientific
confidence are lacking:
(1) Correlation does not establish causation. Correlation
of, say, a declining number of polar bears and a rising
temperature does not establish causation between one and
the other, for it is not at all unusual for two things to covary in parallel with other forcing factors.
11
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (2) Control for natural variability. We live on a dynamic
planet in which all aspects of the physical and biological
environment are in a constant state of flux for reasons that
are entirely natural (including, of course, temperature
change). It is wrong to assume no changes would occur in
the absence of the human presence. Climate, for example,
will be different in 100 years regardless of what humans
do or don’t do.
(3) Local temperature records that confirm warming.
Many studies of the impact of climate change on wildlife
simply assume temperatures have risen, extreme weather
events are more frequent, etc., without establishing that
the relevant local temperature records conform to the
postulated simple long-term warming trend.
All five of the IPCC’s claims relying on
circumstantial evidence listed in Figure 2 are refutable.
• IPCC Claim #1: Unusual melting is occurring in
mountain glaciers, Arctic sea ice and polar icecaps. What
melting is occurring in mountain glaciers, Arctic sea ice
and polar icecaps is not occurring at “unnatural” rates and
does not constitute evidence of a human impact on the
climate. Both the Greenland (Johannessen et al., 2005;
Zwally et al., 2005) and Antarctic (Zwally and
Giovinetto, 2011) icecaps are close to balance. The global
area of sea ice today is similar to that first measured by
satellite observation in 1979 (Humlum, 2013) and
significantly exceeds the ice cover present in former,
warmer times.
Valley glaciers wax and wane on multidecadal,
centennial, and millennial time-scales, and no evidence
exists that their present, varied behavior falls outside
long-term norms or is related to human-related CO2
emissions (Easterbrook, 2011). Figure 8 summarizes the
findings of Chapter 5 of CCR-II: Physical Science
regarding glaciers, sea ice, and polar icecaps.
• IPCC Claim #2: Global sea level is rising at an
enhanced rate and swamping tropical coral atolls. Sealevel rise is not accelerating (Houston and Dean, 2011).
The global average sea-level continues to increase at its
long-term rate of 1–2 mm/year globally (Wöppelmann et
al., 2009). Local and regional sea levels continue to
exhibit typical natural variability – in some places rising
and in others falling. Unusual sea-level rise is therefore
not drowning Pacific coral islands, nor are the islands
being abandoned by “climate refugees.”
The best available data show dynamic variations in
Pacific sea level vary in accord with El Niño-La Niña
12 FIGURE 8
Key Facts about the Cryosphere
•
Satellite and airborne geophysical datasets used to
quantify the global ice budget are short and the methods
involved in their infancy, but results to date suggest both
the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Caps are close to
balance.
•
Deep ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland show
climate change occurs as both major glacial-interglacial
cycles and as shorter decadal and centennial events with
high rates of warming and cooling, including abrupt
temperature steps.
•
Observed changes in temperature, snowfall, ice flow
speed, glacial extent, and iceberg calving in both
Greenland and Antarctica appear to lie within the limits of
natural climate variation.
•
Global sea-ice cover remains similar in area to that at the
start of satellite observations in 1979, with ice shrinkage in
the Arctic Ocean since then being offset by growth around
Antarctica.
•
During the past 25,000 years (late Pleistocene and
Holocene) glaciers around the world have fluctuated
broadly in concert with changing climate, at times
shrinking to positions and volumes smaller than today.
•
This fact notwithstanding, mountain glaciers around the
world show a wide variety of responses to local climate
variation, and do not respond to global temperature
change in a simple, uniform way.
•
Tropical mountain glaciers in both South America and
Africa have retreated in the past 100 years because of
reduced precipitation and increased solar radiation; some
glaciers elsewhere also have retreated since the end of
the Little Ice Age.
•
The data on global glacial history and ice mass balance
do not support the claims made by the IPCC that CO2
emissions are causing most glaciers today to retreat and
melt.
Source: “Chapter 5. Observations: The Cryosphere,” Climate
Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (Chicago, IL: The
Heartland Institute, 2013). cycles, superimposed on a natural long-term eustatic rise
(Australian Bureau of Meteorology, 2011). Island coastal
flooding results not from sea level rise, but from spring
tides or storm surges in combination with development
pressures such as borrow pit digging or groundwater
withdrawal. Persons emigrating from the islands are doing
so for social and economic reasons rather than in response
Summary for Policymakers to environmental threat.
Another claim concerning the effect of climate
change on oceans is that increases in freshwater runoff
into the oceans will disrupt the global thermohaline
circulation system. But the range of natural fluctuation in
the global ocean circulation system has yet to be fully
delineated (Srokosz et al., 2012). Research to date shows
no evidence for changes that lie outside previous natural
variability, nor for any malign influence from increases in
human-related CO2 emissions. See Figure 9 for more
findings about climate change and oceans from Chapter 6
of CCR-II: Physical Science.
• IPCC Claim #3: Droughts, floods, and monsoon
variability and intensity are increasing. The link between
warming and drought is weak, and pan evaporation (a
measurement that responds to the effects of several
climate elements) decreased over the twentieth century
(Roderick et al., 2009). Huntington (2008) concluded on a
globally averaged basis precipitation over land increased
by about 2% over the period 1900–1998. However,
changes in the hydrosphere of this type are regionally
highly variable and show a closer correlation with
multidecadal climate rhythmicity than they do with global
temperature (Zanchettin et al., 2008).
Monsoon intensity correlates with variations in solar
activity rather than increases in atmospheric CO2, and
both the South American and Asian monsoons became
more active during the cold Little Ice Age and less active
during the Medieval Warm Period (Vuille et al., 2012),
suggesting there would be less volatility if the world
becomes warmer. See Figure 9 for more facts about
monsoons, droughts, and floods presented in Chapter 6 of
CCR-I: Physical Science.
• IPCC Claim #4: Global warming is leading to more,
or more intense, wildfires, rainfall, storms, hurricanes,
and other extreme weather events. One of the few areas
where the IPCC has distanced itself from the popular but
false claims made by many environmentalists and
politicians relates to extreme weather events. In 2012, an
IPCC report acknowledged that a relationship between
global warming and wildfires, rainfall, storms, hurricanes,
and other extreme weather events has not been
demonstrated (IPCC, 2012). The NIPCC team’s analysis
agrees. In no case has a convincing relationship been
established between warming over the past 100 years and
increases in any of these extreme events. Instead, the
number and intensity of extreme events vary, and they
wax and wane from one place to another and often in
FIGURE 9
Key Facts about the Hydrosphere
Oceans
• Knowledge of local sea-level change is vital for coastal
management; such change occurs at widely variable rates
around the world, typically between about +5 and -5
mm/year.
• Global (eustatic) sea level, knowledge of which has only
limited use for coastal management, rose at an average
rate of between 1 and 2 mm/year over the past century.
• Satellite altimeter studies of sea-level change indicate
rates of global rise since 1993 of over 3 mm/year, but
complexities of processing and the infancy of the method
precludes viewing this result as secure.
• Rates of global sea-level change vary in decadal and
multidecadal ways and show neither recent acceleration
nor any simple relationship with increasing CO2 emissions.
• Pacific coral atolls are not being drowned by extra sealevel rise; rather, atoll shorelines are affected by direct
weather and infrequent high tide events, ENSO sea level
variations, and impacts of increasing human populations.
• Extra sea-level rise due to heat expansion (thermosteric
rise) is also unlikely given that the Argo buoy network
shows no significant ocean warming over the past 9 years
(Knox and Douglass, 2010).
• Though the range of natural variation has yet to be fully
described, evidence is lacking for any recent changes in
global ocean circulation that lie outside natural variation or
were forced by human CO2 emissions.
Monsoons, Droughts, and Floods
• Little evidence exists for an overall increase in global
precipitation during the twentieth century independent of
natural multidecadal climate rhythmicity.
• Monsoon precipitation did not become more variable or
intense during late twentieth century warming; instead,
precipitation responded mostly to variations in solar
activity.
• South American and Asian monsoons were more active
during the cold Little Ice Age and less active during the
Medieval Warm Period. Neither global nor local changes in
streamflow have been linked to CO2 emissions.
• The relationship between drought and global warming is
weak, since severe droughts occurred during both the
Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.
Source: “Chapter 6. Observations: The Hydrosphere,”
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (Chicago,
IL: The Heartland Institute, 2013). 13
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science parallel with natural decadal or multidecadal climate
oscillations. Figure 10 summarizes key facts on this
subject presented in Chapter 7 of CCR-II: Physical
Science.
• IPCC Claim #5: Unusual melting of Boreal
permafrost or sub-seabed gas hydrates is causing
warming due to methane release. Over historic time,
methane concentration has increased from about 700 ppb
in the eighteenth century to the current level of near 1,800
ppb. The increase in methane concentration levelled off
between 1998 and 2006 at around 1,750 ppb, which may
reflect measures taken at that time to stem leakage from
wells, pipelines, and distribution facilities (Quirk, 2010).
More recently, since about 2007, methane concentrations
have started to increase again, possibly due to a
combination of leaks from new shale gas drilling and
Arctic permafrost decline.
The contribution of increased methane to radiation
forcing since the eighteenth century is estimated to be
only 0.7 W/m2, which is small. And in any case, no
evidence exists that current changes in Arctic permafrost
are other than natural. Most of Earth’s gas hydrates occur
at low saturations and in sediments at such great depths
below the seafloor or onshore permafrost that they will
barely be affected by warming over even one thousand
years.
We conclude no unambiguous evidence
exists for adverse changes to the global
environment caused by human-related CO2
emissions. In particular, the cryosphere is not
melting at an enhanced rate; sea-level rise is
not accelerating; no systematic changes have
been documented in evaporation or rainfall or
in the magnitude or intensity of extreme
meteorological events; and an increased
release of methane into the atmosphere from
permafrost or sub-seabed gas hydrates is
unlikely.
5. Policy Recommendations
The Green Team–Red Team strategy outlined in the
introduction presumes the existence of decision-makers in
industry and government who make sensible policy
decisions in light of the best-available research.
Therefore, while a useful way to discover and expose all
sides of an argument, a two-team strategy is not usually
enough on its own to resolve an issue.
To date, most government signatories to the UN’s
14 FIGURE 10
Key Facts about Extreme Weather Events
• Air temperature variability decreases as mean air
temperature rises, on all time scales.
• Therefore the claim that global warming will lead to more
extremes of climate and weather, including of temperature
itself, seems theoretically unsound; the claim is also
unsupported by empirical evidence.
• Although specific regions have experienced significant
changes in the intensity or number of extreme events over
the twentieth century, for the globe as a whole no
relationship exists between such events and global
warming over the past 100 years.
• Observations from across the planet demonstrate that
droughts have not become more extreme or erratic in
response to global warming. In most cases, the worst
droughts in recorded meteorological history were much
milder than droughts that occurred periodically during
much colder times.
• There is little to no evidence that precipitation will become
more variable and intense in a warming world, indeed
some observations show just the opposite.
• There has been no significant increase in either the
frequency or intensity of stormy weather in the modern era.
• Despite the supposedly “unprecedented” warming of the
twentieth century, there has been no increase in the
intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally or in any
of the specific ocean basins.
Source: “Chapter 7. Observations: Extreme Weather,”
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (Chicago,
IL: The Heartland Institute, 2013). Framework Convention on Climate Change have deferred
to the monopoly advice of the IPCC in setting their
national climate change policies. More than 20 years
down the track, it is now evident this approach has been
mistaken. One result has been the expenditure of
hundreds of billions of dollars implementing energy
policies that now appear to have been unnecessary, or at
least ill-timed and ineffective.
The scientific findings of the NIPCC team point
toward several policy recommendations quite different
from those that have come from the IPCC and its related
agencies, bureaus, and commissions at the United
Nations. We make the following recommendations:
• Climate-hazard response plans should take into
account long-term trends, but the benefits should be
Summary for Policymakers suitably discounted and investments delayed until action
is necessary and likely to be cost-effective. The risks
created by longer-term climate change occur over periods
of decades to hundreds or thousands of years. Urgent
action to “stop global warming” is not needed, and in fact
will almost certainly be wasteful or damaging to civil and
economic liberties.
• Rather than rely exclusively on the IPCC for
scientific advice, policymakers should seek out advice
from independent, nongovernment organizations and
scientists who are free of financial and political conflicts
of interest. The Chinese Academy of Sciences took an
important step in this direction by translating and
publishing an abridged edition of the first two volumes in
NIPCC’s Climate Change Reconsidered series.
• Climate change, whether man-made or not, is a global
phenomenon with very different effects on different parts
of the world. Individual nations should take charge of
setting their own climate policies based upon the hazards
that apply to their particular geography, geology, weather,
and culture – as India has started to do by setting up an
advisory Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate
Change Assessment (INCCCA) (Nelson, 2010).
• Recognize the theoretical hazard of dangerous
human-caused global warming is but one small part of a
much wider climate hazard – the dangerous natural
weather and climatic events that Nature intermittently
presents us with, and always will (Carter, 2010). The
2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in the U.S., the 2007
floods in the United Kingdom, and the tragic bushfires in
Australia in 2009 demonstrate the governments of even
advanced, wealthy countries are often inadequately
prepared for climate-related disasters of natural origin.
• Climate change as a natural hazard is as much a
geological as it is a meteorological issue. Geological
hazards are mostly dealt with by providing civil defense
authorities and the public with accurate, evidence-based
information regarding events such as earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, storms, and floods (which
represent climatic as well as weather events), and then
planning to mitigate and adapt to the effects when such
events occur.
The idea that there can be a one-size-fits-all global
solution to address future climate change, such as
recommended by the United Nations, fails to deal with
real climate and climate-related hazards. It also turned
climate change into a political issue long before the
science was sufficiently advanced to inform policymakers. A better path forward was suggested by Ronald
Brunner and Amanda Lynch:
We need to use adaptive governance to produce
response programs that cope with hazardous climate
events as they happen, and that encourage diversity
and innovation in the search for solutions. In such a
fashion, the highly contentious “global warming”
problem can be recast into an issue in which every
culture and community around the world has an
inherent interest (Brunner and Lynch, 2010).
Conclusion
Few scientists deny that human activities can have an
effect on local climate or that the sum of such local
effects could hypothetically rise to the level of an
observable global signal. The key questions to be
answered, however, are whether the human global signal
is large enough to be measured and if it is, does it
represent, or is it likely to become, a dangerous change
outside the range of natural variability?
NIPCC’s conclusion, drawn from its extensive review
of the scientific evidence, is that any human global
climate signal is so small as to be embedded within the
background variability of the natural climate system and
is not dangerous. At the same time, global temperature
change is occurring, as it always naturally does. A phase
of temperature stasis or cooling has succeeded the mild
twentieth century warming. It is certain that similar
natural climate changes will continue to occur.
In the face of such facts, the most prudent climate
policy is to prepare for and adapt to dangerous climate
events and changes regardless of their origin. Adaptive
planning for future hazardous climate events and change
should be tailored to provide responses to the known
rates, magnitudes, and risks of natural change. Once in
place, these same plans will provide an adequate response
to any human-caused change that may or may not emerge.
Policymakers should resist pressure from lobby
groups to silence scientists who question the authority of
the IPCC to claim to speak for “climate science.” Climate
Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science reveals a
scientific community deeply uncertain about the
reliability of the IPCC’s computer models, its postulates,
and its interpretation of circumstantial evidence. This
criticism doesn’t come from a “fringe” of the climate
science community: It is stated plainly and repeated in
thousands of articles in the peer-reviewed literature.
15
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science The distinguished British
Waddington wrote in 1941,
biologist
Conrad
It is … important that scientists must be ready for their
pet theories to turn out to be wrong. Science as a
whole certainly cannot allow its judgment about facts
to be distorted by ideas of what ought to be true, or
what one may hope to be true (Waddington, 1941).
This prescient statement merits careful examination by
those who continue to assert the fashionable belief, in the
face of strong empirical evidence to the contrary, that
human CO2 emissions are going to cause dangerous global
warming.
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Summary for Policymakers Authors, Contributors, and Reviewers of CCR-II: Physical Science
Lead Authors/Editors
Idso, Craig D.
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
USA
Carter, Robert M.
Emeritus Fellow
Institute of Public Affairs
Australia
Singer, S. Fred
Science and Environmental Policy
Project
USA
Chapter Lead Authors
Kininmonth, William
Science Advisor
Australian Climate Science Coalition
Australia
de Lange, Willem
Science and Engineering Department
The University of Waikato
New Zealand
Lüning, Sebastian
Geologist and Author
Germany
Lupo, Anthony
School of Natural Resources
University of Missouri
USA
Ball, Timothy
Research Fellow
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Canada
Ollier, Cliff
School of Earth and Geographical
Sciences
University of Western Australia
Australia
Carter, Robert M.
Emeritus Fellow
Institute of Public Affairs
Australia
Soon, Willie
Independent Scientist
USA
Easterbrook, Don J.
Professor Emeritus of Geology
Western Washington University
USA
Idso, Craig D.
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
USA
Idso, Sherwood
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
USA
Khandekar, Madhav
Former Research Scientist
Environment Canada
Canada
Contributing Authors
Armstrong, J. Scott
Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
USA
D’Aleo, Joseph
Co-chief Meteorologist
Weatherbell Analytic
USA
Easterbrook, Don J.
Professor Emeritus of Geology
Western Washington University
USA
Green, Kesten
International Graduate School of
Business
University of South Australia
Australia
McKitrick, Ross
Department of Economics
University of Guelph
Canada
Ollier, Cliff
School of Earth and Geographical
Sciences
University of Western Australia
Australia
Segalstad, Tom
Resource and Environmental Geology
University of Oslo
Norway
Singer, S. Fred
Science and Environmental Policy
Project
USA
Spencer, Roy
Principal Research Scientist
University of Alabama in Huntsville
USA
Chapter Reviewers
Abdussamatov, Habibullo
Space Research Laboratory
Pulkovo Observatory
Russian Academy of Sciences
Russia
Bastardi, Joe
Co-chief Meteorologist
Weatherbell Analytic
USA
Battaglia, Franco
Professor of Environmental Chemistry
University of Modena
Italy
19
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science Bowen, David Q.
Professor Emeritus, School of Earth &
Ocean Sciences
Cardiff University
UK
Gray, William
Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric
Science
Colorado State University
USA
Clark, Roy
Ventura Photonics
USA
Gray, Vincent Richard
Climate Consultant
New Zealand
Courtillot, Vincent
Professor Emeritus
University Paris Diderot and
Institut de Physique du Globe
France
Hayden, Howard
Professor of Physics Emeritus
University of Connecticut
USA
Essex, Christopher
Department of Applied Mathematics
University of Western Ontario
Canada
Evans, David
Independent Scientist, Sciencespeak.com,
and Former Carbon Modeller
Australian Greenhouse Office
Australia
Floderus, Sören
Consultant
SF Bureau
Denmark
Franks, Stewart W.
School of Engineering
University of Newcastle
Australia
Friis-Christensen, Eigil
Professor Emeritus
National Space Institute
Technical University of Denmark
Denmark
Goldberg, Fred
Swedish Polar Institute
Sweden
Gould, Laurence
Professor of Physics
University of Hartford
USA
20 Hovland, Martin
Professor Emeritus
Centre for Geobiology
University of Bergen
Norway
Kärner, Olavi
Atmospheric Sensing Group
Tartu Observatory
Estonia
O’Brien, James
Department of Earth, Ocean, and
Atmospheric Science
Florida State University
USA
Paltridge, Garth
Emeritus Professor and Honorary
Research Fellow
University of Tasmania
Australia
Rapp, Donald
Senior Research Scientist and Division
Chief Technologist (retired)
Jet Propulsion Lab
USA
Ribbing, Carl
Department of Engineering Sciences,
Solid State Physics
Uppsala University
Sweden
Scafetta, Nicola
Department of Physics
Duke University
USA
Shade, John
Industrial Statistics Consultant
UK
Sharp, Gary
Independent Consultant
Center for Climate/
Ocean Resources Study
USA
Solheim, Jan-Erik
Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics
University of Oslo
Norway
Uriarte Cantolla, Antón
Sociedad de Ciencias Naturales Aranzadi
Spain
Weber, Gerd-Rainer
Independent Meteorologist
Germany
Editors
Karnick , S.T.
The Heartland Institute
USA
Bast, Diane Carol
The Heartland Institute
USA
From reviews of Climate Change Reconsidered 2009:
“With its emphasis on natural variability as a cause for the recent climate changes, it is a must‐have for serious climate scientists who should not just rely on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report alone to get the full picture of our current state of knowledge (and what is not known) about climate and climate change.” Anthony R. Lupo, Ph.D. University of Missouri‐Columbia “Their scholarly analysis brings some much‐needed realism (and good old‐fashioned common sense) to the climate change debate. Highly informative, Climate Change Reconsidered ought to be required reading for scientists, journalists, policymakers, teachers and students. It is an eye‐opening read for everyone else (concerned citizens, taxpayers, etc.). In short ... this book is highly recommended!” William Mellberg Author, Moon Missions “I’ve been waiting for this book for twenty years. It was a long wait, but I’m not disappointed. Climate Change Reconsidered is a tour de force. It takes on all the alleged evidences of catastrophic, manmade global warming and demonstrates, patiently and clearly, why they fail to support the conclusion.” E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D. Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation “I strongly recommend this book to any individual who seriously wants to understand the science of climate, the effects of climate change on human health, or who needs to make decisions about policy related to greenhouse gas regulations. It should be in every library for education on these questions, as it is the best and most complete work on these subjects of its type.” Howard Maccabee, Ph.D., M.D. Alamo, California “One of the most significant climate science documents ever produced. Coming to conclusions diametrically opposed to those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the new Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) report is essential reading for all politicians, or at least those who want to develop policies that actually benefit their countries and the environment.” Tom Harris, M.S. International Climate Science Coalition “The reports of the NIPCC and of the IPCC are very important reading for the public.... The former, an independent assessment of the claims of the latter, appears to be based on sound interpretations of solid scientific observations. One doctor is telling us that we have cancer and there is no hope (unless we kill ourselves to stop it). The other doctor has a second opinion which says maybe the symptoms are being misinterpreted; maybe we should pay more attention to actual observations and alternative explanations based on sound principles. Climate Change Reconsidered is must reading.” Ronald A. Wells, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley (retired)
THE NONGOVERNMENTAL INTERNATIONAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is an international network of scientists first convened in 2003
to examine the same climate data used by the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Unlike
the IPCC, the NIPCC is not a government agency and does not receive government funding. Whereas the mission of the IPCC is to
justify control of greenhouse gas emissions, the NIPCC has no agenda other than discovering the truth about climate change.
CLIMATE CHANGE RECONSIDERED
Climate Change Reconsidered is a publication series produced by NIPCC and published by The Heartland Institute. Distinguished
coauthors Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer have assembled and oversee an international team of scholars devoted
to producing a thorough and unbiased review of the extensive research on climate change. Three volumes were published prior to the
present publication: Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate (2008), Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) (2009), and Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2011 Interim
Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) (2011). All are available for purchase from The
Heartland Institute and for free online at www.ClimateChangeReconsidered.org and www.nipccreport.org.
CCR-II: PHYSICAL SCIENCE
The current report, Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science, is the most comprehensive and up-to-date review of climate
science available from scientists free of bias caused by political interference. CCR-II combines the research and analysis of previous
volumes in the series with new research published as recently as the third quarter of 2013 (well after the cut-off date for the IPCC’s
Fifth Assessment Report). Compared with past editions, this volume offers an expanded analysis of computer models, solar cycles,
observed temperatures, and extreme weather. A second volume of CCR-II, on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerabilities, is planned for
release in March 2014.
ABOUT THE COAUTHORS
Dr. Craig D. Idso is founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. Since 1998, he has been
the editor and chief contributor to the online magazine CO2 Science. He is the author of several books, including The Many Benefits of
Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment (2011) and CO2, Global Warming and Coral Reefs (2009). His writing, which has appeared in many
peer-reviewed journals, books, and independent reports, has addressed the benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on plant and
animal life, ocean acidification, world food supplies, plant and animal extinctions, and the seasonal cycle of atmospheric CO2. He has
lectured in meteorology at Arizona State University (ASU) and was a faculty researcher in the Office of Climatology at ASU.
Dr. Robert M. Carter is a stratigrapher and marine geologist with degrees from the University of Otago (New Zealand) and University
of Cambridge (England). His research publications include papers on taxonomic palaeontology, palaeoecology, New Zealand and
Pacific geology, stratigraphic classification, sequence stratigraphy, sedimentology, the Great Barrier Reef, Quaternary geology, and
sea level and climate change. He is the author of Climate: The Counter Consensus (2010) and Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies About
Climate Change (2013). Carter’s professional service includes terms as head of the Geology Department, James Cook
University, chairman of the Earth Sciences Panel of the Australian Research Council, chairman of the national Marine Science and
Technologies Committee, and director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program. He is currently an Emeritus Fellow of the
Institute of Public Affairs (Melbourne).
Dr. S. Fred Singer is one of the most distinguished atmospheric physicists in the U.S. He established and served as the first director
of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, now part of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and earned a
U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for his technical leadership. He later served as vice chairman of the National
Advisory Committee for Oceans and Atmosphere. He is coauthor, with Dennis T. Avery, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500
Years (2007, second ed. 2008). Since retiring from the University of Virginia and from his last federal position as chief scientist of the
Department of Transportation, Singer founded and directs the nonprofit Science and Environmental Policy Project.
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